Students work on the Think About It problem in pairs. After 3 minutes of writing time, I have 3-4 students share out the contexts they've written. As they share, I record the contexts on the board (weight, temperature, bank accounts, etc). I'll then ask the rest of the class to share out any other contexts they've written about (without having them read everything they've written), and record those on the running list.

I'll leave the list on the board throughout the lesson, so that students can access it as a resource as they work.

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Resources

In this unit, students have learned how to interpret real-world contexts and compare and order rational numbers. In this lesson, students write real-world contexts to describe comparisons provided, as well as match comparison and real-world contexts.

Because there isn't new content in this lesson, I do not facilitate an Intro to New Material section. Instead, I lead students through Guided Examples.

The first example reads -5 is less than 4. I ask students to come up with a real-world situation that can be described by this inequality, by first thinking about a context that could apply to these numbers. Together, we'll write a context. In general, students should follow these steps in the written responses:

Describe overall context

Describe integers in context separately

Include one ending statement that compares both integers within the context

For example, the answer to the first problem might read "The Patriots made two plays in the last quarter. On the first play, the team lost five yards. On the second play, the team gained four yards. The first play yielded fewer yards than the second play.”

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Big Idea:
What do students already know about integers, rational numbers, and the coordinate plane? What gaps do students have in their understanding? Students take the Unit 3 pretest in order to inform instruction.